Tag Archives: clarence carter

While Brewer resisted calls for Clarence Carter’s head and defended the embattled DES director last year, the governor was far less committal when our reporter asked her yesterday whether she’s committed to keeping Carter on the job and whether he still has her confidence.

The team assigned to check on the safety of children associated with abuse calls that went without investigation has found no “significant’’ cases after seeing more than 2,000 children in the first month of work.

Among the most politically contentious in recent years, 2013 inevitably produced its set of diminished stars and short-lived meteorites — individuals and groups that made a strong impression, all for the right or wrong reasons.

Money was beginning to flow again to Child Protective Services after the economic downturn of the last decade. But the public disclosure on Nov. 21 that more than 6,000 calls into the Child Abuse Hotline were set aside without an investigation evaporated any illusion that CPS was changing for the better.

In early 2009, Child Protective Services revealed for the first time in its Child Welfare Semi-Annual report that legitimate calls into the Child Abuse Hotline “were not assigned” and “were not investigated.”

The rapidly rising number of uninvestigated abuse and neglect reports at Child Protective Services was documented in years of reports to the governor and Legislature, Department of Economic Services Director Clarence Carter confirmed Monday.

Thousands of pages of confidential records of child abuse cases found last month outside a dumpster are unrelated to the discovery that more than 6,500 complaints went uninvestigated, the head of the Department of Economic Security said Monday.

Speakers at a Dec. 3 CPS Community Forum stepped to the microphone three minutes at a time for two hours to deliver old news: Foster parents get no respect, caseworkers are overworked and underpaid, and the Legislature is tight-fisted.

Some lawmakers say Child Protective Services needs more money. Others say it should become its own agency, separate from the Department of Economic Security. Another cautions against “reactionary legislation” that won’t really solve anything.